Geforce 3 Cooling

[OulOat]

Okay, I installed a lapped Crystal Orb on my Geforce 3 yesterday, ran some tests, and touched the bottom of the GPU to see how hot it gets. Man it was hot. So was the crystal orb itself. In fact, I think the card was hotter than it with the stock HSF. That concerned me, so I turned off the comp and pulled out the Geforce 3. I wanted to see if the Crystal Orbs fan was running, so I turned on my comp. It started turning, and to my surprise, it took less than a min for the card to cool off (more or less to room temp). So I'm confused as hell right now. The Orb doesn't cool as well as the stock when the card is running, but cools faster than the stock when the card is unplugged. The whole reason I got the Orb was because the bottom of the Geforce was hot to the touch before.

Then I got thinking, since I still have the stock heatsink, and the Orbs thermal pad (I used AS3 instead), why don't I stick the stock HSF under the GPU on the opposite side of the Orb? I just wanna ask if that is a good idea, since that will give me extra cooling and all that good stuff. The only thing that is concerning me is will the thermal pad conduct electricity? Is there something else I'm overlooking, like the fact that Geforces might run that hot (I have to pull my finger away from the bottom after like 2 secs cause it gets so hot)? Thanks

 

[Kowan]

The thermal pad shouldn't be conductive, but you'd not see a hugh amount of cooling adding a heatsink on the backside of the GPU.
Have you thought about maybe adding a card cooler?
Video card Cooling Fans
They have a few that mount on the side of the case and blow across the AGP/PCI slots.
Video-1-80

 

[fluxquantum]

Kowan, good idea. in fact i have one of these. seems to help.

 

[OulOat]

Damn, my card cooler is at home, 3 hours away... Even though it probably won't do much, will adding the stock HSF to the bottem hurt the card at all? I don't want to just throw out the stock HSF, it's preeeetty.

 

[Jeff7]

I used one of these on my Geforce4 Ti4200. Let me get at least another 20MHz out of the thing, maybe more, and it lets you monitor the RPM's of your video cooler. Of course, I invented a custom mounting system for it, because it's a pretty weighty chunk of copper.
I was under the impression that Orb coolers weren't really too efficient. In most coolers, there's at least a little space between the fan's hub and the bottom of the heatsink; in an orb, the dead zone is directly above the hot processor - doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
For slim cooling, I use Tennmax Lasagna coolers (50x50x10mm, integrated fan/heatsink assembly) or a Globalwin FAC08 (40x40x10, conventional fan-on-heatsink). There's a thicker version, the FA420, but it takes up the adjacent PCI slot, as does my customized copper cooler.
Are there any components on the back of the card? Maybe Arctic Alumina would be best to secure it without using a thermal pad (usually junk). I think AA is nonconductive. However, if you use anything that's really sticky, you could possibly rip off circuit traces if you remove the heatsink - voluntarily or not.

 

[OulOat]

Yeah, I just read up on it, Arctic Alumina Adhesive isn't conductive. What's on the bottom of the GPU is the little power capacitor? They look like they are the same height, but I'm not really sure. That's why I want to use the thermal pad, even if it's not as good as AAA. And I already got a thermal pad unused from the CORB. I know it probably won't do jack, but at least doing something will make me feel better =) Any reasons why I shouldn't be doing this though?

 

[N2Ohyeah]

And this mounting mechanism would be?

I had an old celeron HS on my GF4, it was held on by nylong ties :/ NOT very secure.

Would you care to enlighten us?

 

[OulOat]

Since the Crystal Orb can be attached to Video Cards without pin holes by using thermal tape that comes with it, I figure I'll just use that tape since the CORB is twice as heavy as my stock fan. And, the stock fan will be sitting on the top, so I don't have to worry about it falling off unless I turn my comp upside down. The surprising thing is, the Video card now feels fine, looks like the ASIII took effect, and it's so much quieter now that I got the CORB running on 7V